Response surface analysis of photocatalytic degradation of methyl tert-butyl ether by core/shell Fe3O4/ZnO nanoparticles

The degradation of methyl tert-butyl ether (mtbe) was investigated in the aqueous solution of coated zno ontomagnetite nanoparticale based on an advanced photocatalytic oxidation process. the photocatalysts were synthesizedby coating of zno onto magnetite using precipitation method. the sample was characterized by x-ray diffraction(xrd), scanning electron microscopy (sem), and vibration sample magnetometer (vsm). besides, specific surface areawas also determined by bet method. the four effective factors including ph of the reaction mixture, fe3o4/znomagnetic nanoparticles concentration, initial mtbe concentration and molar ratio of [h2o2]/ [mtbe] were optimizedusing response surface modeling (rsm). using the four-factor-three-level box–behnken design, 29 runs were designedconsidering the effective ranges of the influential factors. the optimized values for the operational parameters underthe respective constraints were obtained at ph of 7.2, fe3o4/zno concentration of 1.78 g/l, initial mtbe concentrationof 89.14 mg/l and [h2o2]/ [mtbe] molar ratio of 2.33. moreover, kinetics of mtbe degradation was determined underoptimum condition. the study about core/shell magnetic nanoparticles (mnps) recycling were also carried out andafter about four times, the percentage of the photocatalytic degradation was about 70%.